Photo album of Yusupov princes

The Photo album of the Yusupov princes

Corporate trustee of the museum: Nornickel

The Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow and the State Arkhangelskoye Estate-museum present an exhibition of photographs from the unique family archive of the Yusupov princes, marking the 100th anniversary since the museum estate was founded.

The collection of photographs at Arkhangelskoye is only a part of vast properties belonging to the Yusupov princes and Sumarokov-Elston counts that were dispersed among major museums and archives in Russia after the Revolution. It includes the work of eminent photographers from the first half of the 19th to early 20th centuries such as L. Lacroix, A. Pasetti, D. Asikritov, S. Levitsky, C. Bergamasco, H. Denier and K. Bulla, encompassing practically all the modes of photography that had appeared by the 1900s: portraits, landscape, views and genre photography. The MAMM exhibition incorporates more than 150 photographs from the 1860s to 1910s, illustrating the life of one of the most famous and noble families in the Russian Empire.

The Yusupovs owned palaces in Moscow (Bolshoi Kharitonevsky Lane), St. Petersburg (on the Moika and Liteiny Prospekt), Tsarskoye and Krasnoye Selo, Koreiz, Paris (the villa in the Parc des Princes), Lower Brittany (Château de Keriolet), etc. However, their favourite family estate was just outside Moscow at Arkhangelskoye, named after the Michael the Archangel Church built there in the 17th century.

The architectural and park ensemble of the estate was formed under the Golitsyn princes, and from 1810, when ownership passed to the Yusupov princes, Arkhangelskoye became a centre of artistic and social life. During the summer months illustrious relatives, friends, representatives of the creative elite and important personages in the Russian Empire would visit the Yusupov estate near Moscow.

In memoirs penned in emigration and published in Paris, Felix Yusupov the younger writes: «I had many plans that would undoubtedly have been realised had I not been obliged to leave my country. I dreamed of making Arkhangelskoye a centre of the arts, having built a whole series of dwellings nearby in the same style for artists, musicians, writers and actors. There would have been an academy, a conservatoire and theatre. I would have turned the palace itself into a museum, reserving several rooms for future exhibitions.»

In the early 20th century photographs of the Yusupov princes’ aristocratic residences often featured in the magazines ‘Capital and Estate’, ‘Old Years’ and ‘World of Art’ and were even printed as postcards, allowing all those interested to learn of one of the largest collections of fine, decorative and applied art, as well as fashion trends in interior décor design. The Yusupov mansions were a focus of attention due to their splendour and magnificence, and the family collections preserved therein were a subject of study for scholars. These photographs now comprise part of the MAMM exposition.

A special place in the exhibition is reserved for the portrait gallery that introduces us to family members of the Yusupov princes. The photographs of Princess Zinaida Nikolaevna Yusupova, one of the most beautiful high society ladies in the Russian Empire, deserve particular attention. Following a longstanding family tradition, the princess was involved in charity work. As a member of the committee to establish a Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow she donated some 50 thousand rubles to creating the museum’s Roman Hall.

The Yusupovs spent autumn in their Crimean estate at Koreiz. Built on the mountainside, the house was single-storeyed to the north, but on the west and south sides it became a three-storey residence that emerged like a cliff above the park sloping down to the sea. Over time its architectural appearance altered. Society life continued even here, due to the proximity of the tsar’s Livadia Palace and the numerous summer residences of the grand dukes. After the February Revolution in 1917 Koreiz became a place of refuge for the Yusupov family until their final days in Russia. On 13 April 1919 the Yusupovs and the Empress Maria Feodorovna left their homeland forever on the battleship Marlborough.

From the will. St. Petersburg, 31 May 1900.